Before looking at habits, goals, or how you motivate yourself to get the most out of every day, there is one simple question to ask yourself. This question (and your response) is a precursor to high productivity.

What Neuroscience Tells Us

Matthew Walker is a neuroscientist who wrote the international best-seller, “Why We Sleep”.

According to Walker, “morning types” make up about 40% of the population. Morning people like to wake up at dawn, enjoy doing so, and are productive in the early hours.  On the other hand, “evening types” account for 30% of people. They revel in going to bed late, burning the midnight oil and rising late in the morning (maybe even afternoon).

The balance of people lie somewhere in between and often can switch between the two. All of these patterns come under the category of chronotypes.

These types matter because, based on Walker’s research, insufficient sleep (which is less than  six or seven hours) can result in a whole lot of bad outcomes, including a diminished immune system, reduced blood sugar levels, and even anxiety.

Adequate sleep is influenced by whether you’re a morning or evening person, because your chronotype type affects when waking and sleeping time is most effective for you.

What If You’re Not A Morning Person?

Many of society’s routines and rhythms (getting up earlier, working breakfasts, being at work by 9am) are geared toward morning types.

In the last few years many articles have lauded the superhuman routines of business leaders who favour rising early in the morning. In many of these articles, there is a hidden assumption – to work hard equals getting up early. It’s simply not the case.

It would be easy for “evening types” to feel like they’re doing something wrong. Evening types may even try to follow the same routines,  even if it defies what comes naturally. If they do this, they run the risk of feeling average, fatigued during the day, and ultimately unsettling their productivity.

So, if you are an evening person, don’t fret just yet… a good portion of the world is saying:

“Hey, it’s okay to take your time. Do what works best for you. When morning people are winding up for the day, you’ll be hitting your stride!”

Take comfort in the stories that run counter to the morning trends.

Jeff Bezos, for example, takes his time in the morning. He prefers to get a good sleep rather than wake when the rooster crows. And he often wakes naturally, without an alarm clock. His mornings are spent getting ready for the day. In his words, he likes to ‘putter’ about.¹⁾

But there are limits for everyone. For example, if evening people stay up too late, they’ll still risk fatigue during their work day.

The key is not to overlook what our body tells us (regardless of whether you are a morning, evening or in-between type), so we start the day on the right foot.  No habit exists that will change our outcomes if we start the day in the wrong state of mind and body.

I’m an in-between type, with a gentle bias toward evenings. When a friend of mine had a goal to hit the gym at 5:30am, I wanted to support them enough to change my routine for a while.  I did this with extra planning, so I could prepare myself for the change and respecting the fact I’d likely find it difficult.

I went to bed earlier. I drank two glasses of water when I woke up. I was patient with my body whilst it woke (whereas my friend went hard in the gym straight away, and I allowed myself time to slowly get into the workout).

When I was trialling this new routine, someone recommended I go for a walk or do some light reading in the afternoons to re-energise. I was amazed what a difference this subtle technique made. Doing it this way, I worked within my “type” for 2 months so I could support my friend, without becoming fatigued at all.

So which type feels most natural to you? Morning, evening or in-between?

Much Is Still To Be Learnt In This Area

We are really just starting to understand the impact of morning and evening cycles on productivity.

In 2016, researcher Nolan Pope from MIT conducted a curious study. Pope reviewed a data set of 2 million students from seventh through to eleventh grade.²⁾

Matching school start times with student GPA and state test scores, Pope found having a morning class of either math or English increased students GPA by a significant amount. The results suggest that moving certain activities to the morning, from the afternoon, is enough to deliver big gains in productivity and performance over the longer term.

If we extended this to company settings, we might choose to do important planning exercises or our own individual thinking in the morning.  Again, Jeff Bezos is an example.  He plans his  most intellectually demanding meetings at 10am.³⁾

Pope’s research gives insights into whether mornings or afternoons may be best suited to complex cognitive tasks. It would be tempting to generalize these learnings to say we are all more productive in the morning. But taking into account the distinction of morning and evening types, there may be such a thing as too early in the morning.

How Leaders & Companies Can Put These Lessons Into Practice

These lessons have important implications for companies, teams and individuals. Recently I’ve met with a dozen different companies to understand how they structure their work days.  All of them had embraced flexible working hours for their people. But only a handful had also equipped their people with the tools to make flexible hours even more effective.

The most progressive companies established a culture of no meetings before 9:30am and no meetings after 4:30pm, to better cater for both morning and evening types.  Some early or late meetings are unavoidable, but the best companies treated these as the exception, instead of the norm.

What are your experiences? I’d be keen to hear. Please consider sharing your thoughts by adding a comment below.

The post Why Your Sleep Cycle Can Be The Key To Productivity appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

Here are 21 of my favorites for morning, afternoon and anytime.

Morning Habits

1. Drink Two Glasses Of Water Upon Waking
When we wake, our body has not had water for 6 to 8 hours and is already in a state of dehydration. Drinking two glasses of water restores your hydration and gives you energy for the day.

2. Make Your Bed Every Day
When you make your bed in the morning, you start the day with a task completed. And if you have a rubbish day, you’ll return to a bed that is made. Take it from a SEAL commander.

3. Stretch To Keep Your Back Healthy
We spend so much time hunched over laptops and craning our neck to view our mobile phones. The long term consequences of this can affect our overall spine health. Daily stretches increase blood circulation, increase fine motor skills and increase mobility. And a simple morning stretch routine boosts energy for the rest of the day.

4. Either: i) Avoid Social Media Until A Certain Time; or ii) Limit It To Several Times 
A founder of one of the dominant social media platforms said:

“[Social media] literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Numerous studies have looked at the negative effects of overusing social media.

I love social media but lately I’ve been more focused on using it in moderation and putting other activities first.

5. Avoid Processed Or Packaged Foods
The vast majority of nicely packaged snacks contain lots of processed food or are high in sugar. They give our brains an injection of glucose which, once burned, dumps us into fatigue. Eat whole foods for sustained energy and mental clarity.

6. Sugary Drinks In Moderation
It takes a fraction of a second to decide on a non-sugary drink instead of a sugary one. With anywhere from 30 to 50 grams of sugar for some sugary drinks, too many can be tough on our brains.

7. Strengthen Your Core
Strengthening your abdominal area builds core strength, which keeps your body agile and dynamic. In as little as two minutes a day, there are a range of exercises to build core strength, that don’t have to be sit-ups (eg. a plank exercise). What’s more you can do these in the house  without needing to go to a gym. Beyond this, every day activities like walking, gardening, and carrying moderate loads all help to build core strength.

8. Say ‘Yes’ Spontaneously
Saying ‘yes’ to something you might not normally do, takes you out of your comfort zone. And this is important for ongoing growth and expansion. I’m not suggesting you ‘yes’ to something dangerous, but a little ‘crazy’ is good for all of us now and then.

Afternoon Habits

9. Avoid Coffee After 4pm
According to ‘Why We Sleep’ by Matthew Walker, caffeine has a half-life of five to seven hours in the body. That means it takes this amount of time for your body to remove at least half the effects of caffeine. So if you drink coffee at 4pm, by 11pm there’s a good chance 50% of the caffeine will still be in your system, which could disturb sleep. Limiting coffee to the mornings or early afternoon means less chance of it causing trouble with our night-time recovery.

10. Write A Short Journal Entry
In as little as two minutes you can write what you’ve done in the day. This makes us more reflective and gives us a thread to track our memories through life. Lately I’ve been using the Day One app to track my entries.

11. Read Three Pages Of A Book
Struggle to read a book? Many people can read more by changing their benchmark. Instead of focusing on getting through the book, change the goal to reading three pages every day. In those three pages, we often get absorbed in the book and read more, without it seeming like a chore.  Success stories of today – Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and many more – attribute a large part of their success to reading.¹⁾

12. Reflect On Your Goals Or Resolutions
Many people write resolutions every year and don’t look at them until the following year. Set yourself the practice of re-visiting your goals every day and you’ll be amazed how this keeps them in focus.

13. Write Or Say One Goal x10 
I guarantee you if you take one goal and either write it or say it out loud x10, your conscious mind will focus attention on how to make it happen. Connecting a physical action (writing or saying something), helps your brain with these processes of external storage and encoding.

External storage provides a cue that brings your goal into focus. Encoding helps your brain determine what is retained and what is discarded in memory.

By focusing on a goal on a regular basis, you are literally teaching your brain to maintain your goal in conscious attention, so that you filter the external environment for signals that are relevant to that goal.

The research supports this. People who write, say or describe goals vividly are up to 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to realise their goals. ²⁾

14. Focus On One Thing You’ve Done Or Are Grateful For 
You’ve done great things today. Within each and every day, think of one thing where you surprised yourself. This gives us joy. It makes us feel fulfilled. It costs nothing and is quick to do.

15. Do One Thing You’ve Been Avoiding
If you’re like me, you might have a list of things you know you need to do, but have been avoiding. Sometimes I feel like this list owns me, not me owning it. So I started doing one thing on this list every day. Very quickly this list became smaller and I feel all the better for it.

16. Book A Catch Up With Someone You Enjoy Spending Time With
Some of the most meaningful insights you’ll have in life, come from talking with people you enjoy spending time with. Take two minutes to book a coffee with one of these people. You’ll never regret it.

Anytime Habits

17. Tell Your Partner/Family You Appreciate Them
A few years ago The New York Times said married couples only talk to each other, on average, less than 4 minutes a day. In another psychology study, researchers found that unless husbands and wives told each other five positive things for every one negative thing, the marriage would likely fail. If you’re in a relationship, tell the person you appreciate or love them every day. And if not in a relationship, tell someone in your family or a close friend how much they mean to you.

18. Acknowledge One Person Each Day Who Made A Difference To You
Just recently a person in my professional network had lunch with me and shared some incredible stories. I told them how much of a difference it had made to me; that they had taken time and shared their wealth of experience. When you acknowledge the kindness that someone else has done for you, you strengthen your relationship with them. This is important because a 75 year study by Harvard researchers found that the ongoing strength of relationships is vital to ongoing happiness.

19. Stop & Focus On Your Breathing 
Once a day…stop. Spend two minutes focusing on your breathing. Even in the midst of chaos, it will give you calm. It will clear your mind. And it will put your body and thoughts back in sync for what you need to do next.

20. Belief & Discipline
Belief and discipline are incredibly underrated. Above talent and IQ, if you believe in yourself and pursue your priorities with continued practice, you’ll achieve remarkable results.

In 2005 Martin Seligman and Angela Ducksworth from the University of Pennsylvania conducted two seperate studies on eighth grade students. They wanted to put to the test whether those students with higher propensity to focus would outperform those students who had higher IQs.

The research found that “highly self-disciplined adolescents outperformed their more impulsive peers on every academic-performance variable, including report-card grades, standardized achievement-test scores, admission to a competitive high school.” ³⁾

You might say anyone can work hard to get slightly ahead. This may be true, but in this study those with discipline weren’t a bit ahead. For many of the indications, the correlation between self-discipline and achievement was often twice the size of the correlation when compared with the cohort of high IQ students.

So if you have two minutes, push one doubt that you have aside or do one action that helps with you one of your goals.

21. Update Your Habit List
I’ve spent months researching and understanding habits. The simple lesson I learned is to practice simple habits, connected to goals, and do them every day. To do this, a habit list can help you track whether what you wanted to do, is what you actually did. I update my habit list daily. Sometimes I miss things. But looking at this list and updating it is enough to keep me focused on what actions I want to create.

If you enjoyed this article, I’d love to hear which is your favorite among this list or any other micro-habits that are important to your success. Consider leaving a comment below.

The post 21 Micro Habits To Boost Your Day appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

What a great question!

I thought about this question and did some research. From this I found the eight hobbies below that, if followed on a consistent basis, will improve cognitive capacity.

My belief is that any hobby that allows you to experience from the Learning Loop will make you better, stronger and smarter.

So long as you absorb and apply feedback through this loop, you’ll get better at whatever you do.

By applying this learning loop, these hobbies are proven to help people lead a smarter and more balanced life.

Reading – Expand Your Mind

Warren Buffet told students at a Columbia Business School: “Read 500 pages…every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” Enough said :).

Writing – Structure How Your Brain Thinks

Jeff Bezos doesn’t allow his employees to express new ideas as slides….he only accepts written documents and narratives. There’s good reason for this. Writing is one of the best ways to train yourself how to structure an argument, build a story and convey ideas logically.

Education – Build Intellectual Wealth

Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, said “I am concerned that too many people are focused too much on money and not on their greatest wealth, which is their education.” Education is one of the best ways to expand your mind and increase intelligence.

Music – Expanded Cognitive Skills

While studies differ on whether there is such a thing as the Mozart Effect (a hypothesis put forward by Dr Gordon Shaw, that listening to Mozart while studying boosts IQ), listening to music is one of the very best ways to get into ‘flow’. Whether you’re studying or working on a complex problem, music can help your brain do its best work. And playing a musical instrument has been proven to increase cognitive skills and brain function. So if music is food for your ears, eat well and nutritiously :).

Martial Arts/Dance/Yoga/Focused Exercise – Know Your Body, Know Yourself

Intellectual intelligence is different from body intelligence. Truly knowing ourselves requires us to connect our mind and our body. Any hobby that does this – martial arts, dance, yoga, sports – will help you build this connection and learn about yourself.

Open Mindedness – Take An Expansive Frame

A good deal of the world is closed minded…but thankfully, many people are open minded. Practice compassion, tolerance, love. Look for the good in people and yourself. Be curious and treat the world as a place with boundless opportunity for learning. How we frame things is how we see things, so select an expansive frame rather that a limiting one. Your world will expand and so will you.

Travel – Build Empathy For The World

Travel builds empathy for other cultures. And empathy is one of the greatest ways to build emotional intelligence. See as much of the world as you can, but don’t forget the value of ‘home’. Every country is full of wonder, and that is true especially of the places each and every one of us come from.

Lifelong Learning – Start Curious, Stay Curious

Learning doesn’t have to stop. When I meet eighty and ninety year olds, I can tell the ones that have chosen lifelong learning.

They are still curious and alive with possibility.

Few other pursuits other than lifelong learning ignite our curiosity, keep our minds active and our bodies engaged.

Start curious and stay curious. Share what you learn with someone. Aim to never stop learning.

What do you believe are the most important hobbies that have made you smarter? Please consider sharing your thoughts by adding a comment.

The post 8 Hobbies That Make You Smarter appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

Resilience means a lot of different things to different people. And it’s true to say it has become overused in management literature.

To me resilience means ‘being in a state of resourcefulness to manage situations and complexities in an efficient, appropriate and emotionally resourceful manner’. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress”.

When we have high resilience, we feel as though we can manage situations, even if they’re very complex and demanding. When we have low resilience, even small things can push us out of emotional balance.

From my own experience, when I have been in periods of high resilience, I’ve been amazed by what’s possible. In these states I’ve turned around work that would usually require weeks of effort in a single day.

But when I’ve been in periods of low resilience, even the smallest things (eg. searching for keys at the bottom of a bag) can seem like a struggle.

Thinking About Resilience on Two Dimensions

Resilience is one of the most important qualities we can develop as leaders, but unfortunately it is not often discussed.

I think about resilience along two dimensions:

1. Response: What is the level of our response to an event or situation. Is it a ‘resourceful’ response or is it a ‘reactive’ response? What I mean by ‘resourceful’ is whether we can respond in a way that takes advantage of all of our capabilities – balance, reason, logic, emotion – as opposed to pure reflex.
2. Emotional Reserve: how does responding to the event or situation affect the ’emotional reserves’ that we have available to us. When someone says “I have nothing left in the tank to deal with this situation” we could say they have low emotional reserves, compared with when someone says “sure thing, I’m up for this and can deal with it, no problem”.

4 Levels of Resilience – A Tool for Self Assessment and Goals

Based on this, I think about four differing states of resilience:

• Reactive (Low Resilience): in response to an event or situation, we are immediately pushed over the edge, and react quickly and in the ‘heat of the moment’. We also find the situation very draining to deal with when we are in this state.
• Temporary Reactivity: in this instance, we may react quickly, but very soon after we ‘return to our senses’ and have more emotional resources available to us. In these situations, moments after we react, we might say something like ‘I’m sorry, that was a knee jerk reaction, let’s take another look at that’. Equally, if we have reacted passively (by being quiet), we may respond and say ‘I was not quite myself yesterday. Now that I’ve had some rest, could we speak more about that one more time’.
• Temporary Resilience: in this instance, we have a good level of resilience. The event or situation depletes our emotional reserve, but we are well equipped to manage the event or situation from a well-resourced state. In these situations, dealing with the situation may have an emotional tax, but we quickly recover and can be confident we dealt with the situation as well as possible.
• Active Resilience (Complete Resilience): in this final stage, our resilience is strong and the event or situation can be readily managed in a highly resourceful state. There is little depletion of our emotional reserves. We might say the ‘event is like water off a ducks back’ or it ‘hardly made a dint’. In these situations, we are confident we gave our best and still have more to give for the next challenge

These four states are shown in the model below. The white arrows show how we may shift between states. The states on the left of the model are in the ‘reactive zone’ and those on the right are in the ‘resourceful zone’.

Some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs operate from a place of ‘active resilience’. Despite setbacks and challenges, their conviction to the end goal (whether that’s creating a successful business or launching a new product) is immovable.

In Guy Raz’s interview of Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, Mr Kelleher discusses himself as never being stressed or in doubt of his company’s success. This is despite that fact that sometimes he was not sure whether the airline’s next flight would go ahead!

Ideally, we would spend as much time as possible in the ‘resourceful’ quadrants of this picture. From here, we are best resourced to deal with change and can be the best possible leaders for people around us.

If this is the goal, it’s important to pursue activities that keep us ‘well resourced’. Whether that’s doing regular exercise, going for a walk, spending time with our family, reading a book or eating well…..whatever it might be, this model is both an aspiration as well as a tool for personal assessment.

The activities that preserve our resourcefulness will vary for each and every one of us. So it’s inportant to observe what gives you energy and what takes it away.

When we think about the week that’s just gone, if we’ve spent more time than we would like in a ‘reactive’ state, that’s an indicator we should change our patterns to make us more resourceful. Likewise, if we spent a good deal of time in a resourceful state, then we can consider what made the difference so we could do more of those activities in the future.

Finally, it’s important to have patience with ourselves. While some people may spend 100% of their time in a highly resilient state, that’s likely not realistic for all of us. Our resilience will ebb and flow as we go through new circumstances. This is particularly the case as we take on new challenges and opportunities which require differing skills.

I hope you’ve found this post useful in thinking about your level of resilience. It would be great to know your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

The post How to Be Resourceful and Less Reactive: 4 Types of Resilience for Leaders Today appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

I hadn’t worked with this person for a while, but I had been following their career, and I knew they were extremely talented. So it was no surprise when they told me they had been approached about a job that paid a lot more than their current role.

My friend asked me, “What should I do#8221;

“Think about the money last,” I told them.

Now I know the financial aspects of a job are important to career decisions. Very important. But I’ve also met a lot of people who uprooted their jobs for more pay, only to be disappointed because money was the only thing they thought about.

According to the research by Glassdoor and the HBR “one of the most striking results we’ve found is that, across all income levels, the top predictor of workplace satisfaction is not pay”.[1]

So what else can we think about when we’re considering a career change?  When I thought about the shifts I’ve made over the last decade, these are the five factors I came up with.

Depending where we’re at in our careers, we might weight some of these higher than others. The key is to make sure we’re giving consideration to all five.

#1. Career Prospects

A job is about more than the role. It’s about what opportunities the role will also open up in the future. Does the role give you prospects? Does it make you feel excited about the things you’ll learn on the job, the people you’ll work with, or the challenges or opportunities you’ll take on? Is the role a match with your skills, and will it also stretch you in areas you are interested in?

#2. Environment

We spend so much time during every day in our jobs. It’s important to evaluate if the environment that comes with the role will be right for you.

Questions to ask here are:

• What is the physical environment like (the offices, open spaces, light in the building; Is it fixed or flexi desk, etc)?
• What is the mental environment like (eg. is it stressful, is the business going through change, etc)?
• What is the time environment like (eg. are there standard work hours, will you be expected to work late, are their flexible hours, etc)?
• What is the culture like? Is it fun and playful, explorative, innovative. Culture is an intangible which has a tremendous influence on the level of enjoyment we have in our work. So make sure the culture is right for you and that you will be able to contribute to it.

#3. Wants/Needs

A third fundamental is to consider your own wants and needs. This is a question for you and you only.

“What do you personally need to do your best work#8221;

The answer is different for every person.

Some people love autonomy. Others love guidance.

For me, I know I need a certain level of time for free thinking. This is where I create value by doing strategic work.

Consider all the elements you need to do your best work. Write a list. This list will be a great check-sheet for whether the role will be a fit for what you’re looking for.

#4. Leadership

Someone once told me ‘people don’t leave jobs, they leave people’. To a certain extent this is true.

Chances are you will spend a great portion of your time working for the person who hires you, so it’s important you respect them and feel they’ll support you.

A great manager will challenge you just as much as they will support you.

I’ve been very fortunate in that the majority of people I’ve worked for have been incredible leaders. They’ve shown me the types of qualities I aspire to, as well as the qualities I look for in people I chose to work for.

#5. Finances

This is the last fundamental. Now I know money is important. But, too often people make decisions on this factor alone!

I’ve known people to go into well paid positions only to find they have to work 70 hour weeks.

By considering this last, it ensures we’ve devoted attention to everything else. This is extremely important for our long lasting satisfaction in a new role.

Summary

These are not all the questions you might consider when deciding on a new role. They are the ones I’ve found important. I hope you find this useful for yourself or a friend. And if you have other ideas for areas to consider, I’d love to hear them in the comments area below.

References

1. What matters more to your workforce than money, HBR, 2017.

The post 5 Factors to Consider in a Career Decision (and Why Finances is Last) appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

So I went overseas for 15 months. I remember backpacking through Turkey with a student archaeologist, walking through Alhambra in Spain before it became the set for Game of Thrones, the smell of Italian coffee in a small hostel in Rome. It was an incredible life experience.

When I returned I realised I had to work. So in my early twenties I started a job. I worked for the money.

A few years later I started thinking beyond a job. I wanted a career. I picked up some more study. I decided to specialise in digital. I did things to get ahead.

As social media boomed I started a blog. I participated on Twitter. I did all the right things on Linked In. Everything ran like clock work. I posted regularly. I shared regularly.

I scoured news feeds until late into the evening. I read ‘how to’ tips on Copyblogger. I learnt all I could about successful digital content.

Then several years ago I realised I’d settled into a routine. Lots of time writing. Lots of time scheduling posts.

When I thought about it, I realised the routine I had settled into could have easily been boring.  But it wasn’t. I always found something interesting in writing.

Yet there were people I knew who hadn’t found it inspiring it all.  Many of them had started a blog or ran an online business where digital content was important.  And after a year or two they told me writing content had become a real drag.

This is every blogger’s digital content dilemma. When we write online content for the sake of sharing or winning traffic, and not to express ourselves….we can easily find ourselves in a bind.

Suddenly in this scenario the content is driving us and we’re not driving the content.

It’s an easy trap to fall into.

My younger self loved to explore the world. He would wake up and decide where he wanted to catch the train to that day. So I try to do the same with my content.

I ask questions about what I write. Is this different or unique in some way? Will this content appeal to my audience? Do I want to write about this? Does writing this help me express myself?

The first two questions are relevant to the audience.  The second two are relevant to the content creator.

When we write like this our writing gives us energy, instead of taking it away.

It’s not always easy to answer these questions. But when we can answer ‘yes’ to all four, we know we’re on the right side of the content dilemma. Our content strategy will have the best chance of success because there’s something in it for the audience as well for ourselves.

When we write like this our writing gives us energy, instead of taking it away.  Energy is a strange thing to talk about when it comes to writing good digital content. Yet it’s fundamental for success.

The vast majority of blogs take years before they start to see real results from organic traffic.  A well executed content strategy full of great content ideas is more like running a marathon than a sprint. This is why its so important to be inspired by what we write.

The post Do You Face Every Blogger’s Digital Content Dilemma? appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

The question that sparked my interest was what learning strategies do “quick learners” follow.  Here is my response, which was republished on Inc.com.

***

Your question is a great one. And it forced me to reflect about the things I have learned across my interests in business, personal development, and martial arts.

Let me tell you, I’ve seen many slow learners understand subjects in far greater detail than people who can learn at a fast pace. If fact, slow learners can bring a deliberateness that sometimes is lacking in fast learners. So this can certainly be an advantage for you also.

Having said that, these are principles I’ve applied in my own learning that I feel are universal.

#1. Repetition.

I firmly believe repetition leads to mastery. When learning a new skill, practice that skill often. When learning a new theory, apply it wherever you can.

As Bruce Lee said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Any skill refined through continuous practice over time will become formidable.

#2. Focus.

With so many distractions today–social media, multitasking, open-plan offices–we’re receiving constant stimuli.

We’ve lost the ability to focus. Yet focus is what is required to truly understand and absorb any subject.

To learn a new skill, I find time to focus on it in an environment free from distraction. When I’m reading about it, I’ll listen to music without lyrics, so the music does not distract me from the content of what I’m reading.

Steve Jobs said, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

#3. Context and detail.

To understand a specific subject, I find it useful to look at the big picture first. I like to understand the context of things.

So in a book I’ll read the table of contents before I look at the pages. This way I get a sense for where the overall context is headed. And when I read the details, I’ll understand how one theme relates to another. Detail is important, but at the right time.

Start too early on the details and you’ll miss the context of the whole. Miss details altogether, and understanding only stays superficial.

So I switch between context and detail so I learn the surface and the depth.

#4. Relationship.

Learning by understanding context and detail (the prior point) gives me a sense of the relationships among information. And this is very important for retained learning.

This is one of the reasons why, to recall the order of a full deck of cards, many people tell themselves a story involving all the characters in the cards. The story details the relationships of the cards to one another.

Building a meaningful relationship across the themes you’re studying is one of the best ways to accelerate and retain learning.

#5. Pace.

Pace is an excellent variable to play with.

For example, if you’re listening to a lecture, you could speed up the pace of the lecture x2.

Pace also serves another important function. It puts us under different types of pressure, and because of this, we adjust our learning method.

Putting ourselves through this variability builds our capacity, much in the same way that a long-distance runner may do hill sprints to work on his or her overall fitness.

In my own case, if I’m working on a presentation, I’ll try to say it at twice the speed on the final practices, to ensure that I can recall all the information I need under pressure.

If I can recall it at double the speed, I know it will be available to me at normal speed without stress.

This isn’t just about recall; it is about changing the dynamics of how we learn, to build flexibility into our learning methods.

I hope these are helpful to you. Best of luck with your own personal development.

The post 5 Ways to Learn and Remember Absolutely Anything appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

At the time, companies like ODesk (now called Upwork) and eLance were leading the way for outsourcing services. These companies connected suppliers with companies and individuals, making it possible to outsource specific tasks through to entire website builds.

There is no question the digital economy has fueled the outsourcing revolution. What I’ve found surprising is the recent trend toward Personal Outsourcing (the concept of shifting discreet chunks of work that we would usually do as individuals, to others).

In this post we take a look at a few start-ups making headway in the Personal Outsourcing revolution.

Wonder

Wonder helps people get their questions answered through effective research. Using the service is simple….just pose a question via the site, and Wonder will assign a researcher to research and respond to the question.

Pricing for Wonder is based on the number of questions you want to be solved – $39.99 a month will get you 5 responses, $99.99 will get you 15, and the bulk package is $299.99 for 50 requests a month.

Wonder even has an option to ask a first question for free.  Give it a try here.

It looks like the service is receiving high demand, because it took me several days for me to receive a response to my trial question. I was very happy though with what I received!

Jarvis

Jarvis was founded in July 2013 as an “assistant to your virtual life”. Jarvis is a tech-enabled person that helps coordinate people’s lives through completing tasks and errands via SMS requests.

Jarvis will help you do everything from booking restaurants to finding a gift for your best friend’s b’day.

Jarvis runs on a subscription revenue model. The company offers a 7-day free trial. After that, it’s $99 per month for the starter package, $199 for the executive package and $599 for the jetsetter package.

Magic

Magic was founded in February, 2015. I first read about Magic and its co-founder Mike Chen (@mikechen) through Wired, and was impressed how a simple idea had suddenly gone so viral it was struggling to keep up with demand.

It is similar to Jarvis and has trained operators available day and night to answer customers’ requests, also via SMS. They order what you need when you want it, using ancillary services like Instacart and Postmates.

It’s free to chat with Magic, but users are charged per request. Their total price is confirmed and then billed and the tip is included.

Magic charges per transaction, making their revenue model a basic sales model.

Alfred

Alfred, founded in September, 2013, is a different concept than Jarvis and Magic. Alfred has raised $12m in capital and provides customers with a way to do weekly errands without lifting a finger. The company setup Hello Alfred this year, which is a portal that allows customers to access the company’s services on-demand.  The service pairs busy career people with personal assistants who will pick up dry cleaning, get groceries, do laundry and other household-related tasks. This is leaning towards a traditional personal assistant role, versus more of a virtual assistant.

Their pricing model is subscription-based, charging weekly. The Alfred Tidy-Up is $15 per week, Alfred Basics is $22 per week, and the Alfred Service is $42 per week. The company also offers ‘a la carte’ (per transaction) pricing.

A final note

What is so interesting about some of these services, is that they depart from the purely digital world, to the offline world also. This reflects just how much attitudes are changing.

A decade ago many of us shunned the concept of buying clothes online. It seemed to be a great risk compared to going in-store. But of course now online retailers are among the fasted growing eCommerce businesses of any industry.

Undoubtedly, many of us have similar reservations about booking help with ‘home duties’ through a service like Alfred. But one has to wonder – in this world of increasing automation and home connectivity – whether these concerns will one day be overcome in the same way they were for online retailing.

The post 4 Hot New Starts Ups In The Personal Outsourcing Revolution appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

In the pressures of today’s business, we may not always be able to realise these principles. But like the stone garden’s themselves, the principles are a reminder of what to aspire to, and even if these cannot be achieved every day, reflecting on these principles may make improve our daily practice.

1. Time

Stone gardens take time to create. It takes time to mold from a collection of pebbles a form that demonstrates artistry. This process cannot be rushed. It takes time. For our projects, how often do we ask for more time to produce an outcome of higher quality? Often we do not ask for more time for fear that our business may so ‘no’. However, we may be surprised how often the business is willing to trade-off time for a higher quality result.

2. Patience

These gardens take incredible patience. In this way the garden itself challenges the individual who works in it. For this, the peace of the garden must first be mirrored by the peace of the person, and out of this patience with oneself, the garden can emerge.

We need this patience with ourselves in order to create work that reflects ourselves. If we have this patience, we’ll achieve both for ourselves as well as the customers we’re creating for.

For digital projects, it’s often visible to the customer when the business has not had patience. For example, how often have you seen times when the Home Page of a website looked like a scramble of ideas, made incoherent by too many voices. A little more patience – to ask ourselves whether what we’re creating could be made more simple for our customers – helps remove confusion and introduce simplicity before the project is launched.

3. Care

Every stone has its place in a stone garden. And to achieve this requires care for the placement of every element. So often in projects we can realise an outcome without devoting attention to all the elements (whether it’s ‘time’, ‘cost’ or ‘quality’ of the result). While we will achieve an outcome, it may only be a fraction of its true potential.

Imagine what would be possible if we did work where we could give care to all the elements. We can follow this principle by introducing it in subtle ways to our projects. For example, in a recent project we tested User Interfaces with customers. We asked questions like “does this screens make sense to you, what else would you like to see on this screen, what questions does this screen create for you#8221;. These simple questions introduced care for our customers, and allowed us to realise changes which led to a better product.  Other methods include taking time up front to carefully think through wireframe processes to put ourselves in customers’ persepctives.

4. Beauty

There have been occasions where I’ve worked with teams that have delivered digital designs that ‘wowed’ people.

In these cases, people commented on the ‘beauty’ of the design. They said things like “it has everything I need, and is still great to look at, without being complex.”

When you receive feedback like this, it encourages a different sense of pride in the work. When people visit Japanese stone gardens, it’s common to be amazed by them and to have that ‘wow’ experience as a result of their beauty.

5. Simplicity

Zen gardens are revered because of their simplicity. Pebbles, upon stones, upon larger rocks, that provide a sense of being near water, when one’s away from it. Even though they are complex, when looking at any individual element of a stone garden they provide a feeling of simplicity.

So much digital work is ‘complex’ only. In every digital interface I’ve seen, there exists the same opportunity to represent simple and complex at once – to provide the user with a sense of richness without being overwhelmed. This is the goal of the optimum experience.

Apple’s store does an incredible job of this. On the page there is richness, and at the same time the design is elegant and easy to look at.

Question: What other principles do you follow to achieve fantastic digital design? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Photo Source: “The Art of Preserving One’s Own Culture and Heritage X (KYOTO/JAPAN/TOFUKU-JI)” by Chi King

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In companies we often study the structure and practice of successful brands. So why not study a discipline that has been around in many forms for thousands of years?  Within this post we explore 3 lessons for leaders based on the principles of martial arts and their focus on development of body, mind and character.

1. Look towards the next goal

It can take years to reach a black belt.  All students start as white belts and work towards the goal of reaching black belt. Initially it seems like a mountainous task, however, the belt system gives martial arts students smaller goals to aim for, represented in the colour of each new belt – white, purple, yellow, orange, etc – all the way to black. The process of training hard and being rewarded with the ‘next belt’ allows the student to taste success in the context of a larger journey.

Lesson for leaders: This metaphor of the belt system is very useful in our own careers and how we coach others. Instead of aiming to becoming the CEO before we’re ready for it, we can instead focus on the next role which will take us toward the longer term ambition. When managing staff, we can coach them on the small measures of success so that they experience ‘wins’ in the face of larger challenges.

2. Speak to the level you’re working with

In the Dojo (place of study) senior students and instructor black belts teach and mentor younger level students. In providing effective instruction, the “teacher” stretches the student just enough to challenge them, so they may learn. The teacher ensures the student is stretched, but not too far beyond their level of skill. Thus, the student learns at a pace where risk is minimised while also receiving positive reinforcement. This is the balance.

Lesson for leaders: The most effective leaders I’ve met in business use a similar technique. By understanding the strengths and limitations of individuals within their teams, they are able to tailor their level of instruction to stretch them just enough so they can excel and learn. In contrast, under-skilled managers speak to their people without consideration of the their skill or experience.

Consider what activities you can provide to your staff to provide them with the appropriate ‘stretch’ which will challenge them to the right degree. Also, consider how you would formulate a collective message to the strengths of your team, and lift all of its members to the next level.

3. Learn by doing, not only by thinking

In martial arts, a technique cannot be mastered by thinking alone. The technique must be done. The body must move. The mind can watch the movement as it’s being done, but really only afterward, when the muscles slow from rapid movement, can the mind reflect deeply on what has happened. Often this reflection happens outside of class itself.

In this way students of martial arts do techniques hundreds (if not tens of thousands) of times, learning the intricacies of movement and embedding them into muscle memory, in order to truly learn.

As a strategist I used to think plans could be created through thinking. However, in today’s fast moving environment, where technology is constantly evolving, we need ‘pragmatic strategy’. This type of strategy blends strategic thinking with continuous execution and action. What is learnt through action is then fed back into the strategy making process.

Lesson for leaders: If we are to adopt this practice as leaders of our teams, it means creating opportunities for our people to learn by doing. This requires setting a a culture where it is ‘okay to fail’ and people seek ‘hands on’ experience, whether it’s running a project or meeting with customers.  Evaluation of the risks of any strategy would still be an important driver in decision making, and risks would be ‘balanced’ (instead of always avoided) in order to create learning opportunities.  This borrows from the concept of Action Learning which has been in place in organisations for some time,

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